This is Josh Neicho emailing from Letters at the London Evening
Standard. Having come across your website, I was keen to get in
touch with regards to the gun killings over the past fortnight in
London and the Prime Minister's reaction. I would be very
interested to hear your comments about the lack of effectiveness of
the Government's legislation on firearms over the past decade on
the illegal gun trade, and its impact on the legal trade, and the
best policy that could be pursued now against gun violence. I copy
today's news stories and Friday's leader on the subject below.

Kind regards,

Josh Neicho
Evening Standard Letters
020 7938 7596

News, 19 February
TONY BLAIR was accused of trying to "spin" his way out of Britain's
gun crime crisis today after it emerged his promised new firearms
laws were already in place.
The Prime Minister complained yesterday that five-year jail
sentences for possessing illegal guns did not apply to under-21s
and warned: "We've got to lower that age."
He is also due to hold a summit on gun crime with police chiefs
next month. But the Tories pointed out today that the Criminal
Justice Act 2003 does indeed impose mandatory prison terms for
over-18s caught with a firearm. The courts have since intervened to
state that under-21s should be sent to detention centres rather
than jail.
Shadow home secretary David Davis said that the revelation proved
that Labour was more interested in "spin" than tackling gun crime.
He said that the court decision showed how badly drafted the 2003
legislation was, while the Court of Appeal judgment showed how
difficult it would be to lock up teenagers automatically.
Mr Davis said: "This will be the fourth gun crime summit and at
every turn the problem gets worse. This is yet another rapid
reaction to headlines, with the threat of ill-thought-out laws that
will themselves lead to more problems."
Mr Blair told BBC1's Sunday AM that there was a "real problem" but
said gun crime fell in London over the past year.
Downing Street later acknowledged that the law already covered
teenagers but said Mr Blair wanted it applied. A spokesman said:
"The law is not being applied correctly. We need to make sure it
is."
The Prime Minister's tendency to spin the facts faced a separate
attack in a new documentary on his leadership. BBC2's Blair: The
Inside Story, to be shown tomorrow night, features Commons leader
Jack Straw stating: "He is certainly a master of ambiguity."

News, 19 February
POLICE have arrested 15 men in a clampdown on gangs on the streets
of south London.
Officers from the Metropolitan Police's CO19 firearms unit
identified more than 30 vehicles linked to gun criminality over the
weekend.
The specialist teams then carried out "hard stops" on the cars.
They seized drugs, a knife and a CS gas canister. One man was
arrested on suspicion of sexual assault.
Hundreds of extra officers are on patrol in Lambeth, Southwark and
Lewisham following an unprecedented spate of gangland shootings
that has claimed the lives of three teenage boys in 11 days.
Armed police in rapid response units are also on patrol in south
London. A post-mortem has confirmed that the latest victim, Billy
Cox, 15, died from a single gunshot wound to his chest. He was
killed in his home in north Clapham at 3.40pm on 14 February.
Detectives are believed to be looking for a known drug dealer in
connection with his murder.
Billy had been sucked into the drugs and gun culture of the area.
He had signed up as a "foot soldier" in the notorious Clap Town
Kids gang.
One local gang "general" said it was common knowledge that Billy
and other junior gangsters had bought a firearm to share.
Police now fear that as larger gangs splinter, there are more small
gangs operating on every south London estate - with some members as
young as 10 years old.
It was also revealed that the jailing of two key figures in the
drugs underworld has led to an explosion of violence and gang
fighting in south London.
The men, both of whom were arrested in the last six months, were
senior figures who controlled the distribution of crack cocaine to
many of the capital's most notorious estates.
This latest wave of violence and crime has been triggered by the
battle to gain control of this trade.
There were two shootings elsewhere in London over the weekend. In
Homerton, east London, a man was shot dead in what has been
described as a "cold-blooded execution".
The 28-year-old victim, who has not yet been named, was ambushed in
his car after being summoned by phone to a birthday party in
Hackney.
One man told the Standard today how he witnessed the chilling sight
of the gunman returning to the scene to make sure the victim was
dead, before shooting him twice more as he lay dying helpless on
the street.
Royal Mail worker Claudio Chaby, 30, said: "He lifted up the guy's
arm to see if he was still alive. When he let it go it just dropped
to the ground.

"But he shot him two more times and then ran off" he said.
The shooting happened while the victim was parking his grey Fiat
Punto. Two or three men walked up and opened fire. The man, who
went by the street name of Mr West, tried to escape by reversing
his car but ploughed into a parked car.
The two gunmen shot the victim as he got out of the car. He
collapsed on to the ground as the killers ran off along Digby Road.
One local woman, who asked not to be named, told the Standard she
believed the man had fallen victim to a planned hit.
She said the victim, who was Jamaican and lived in Tottenham, had
received an early morning phone call inviting him to the party.
"Everyone knew him by his alias, Mr West. He was not a saint but he
was a popular guy.
"It was set up. They called him and got him down here, to kill him,
she said.
The murder is being investigated by detectives from the Met's
Operation Trident, which deals with black-on-black gun crime.
Detective Inspector Stephen Horsley said officers were keen to
speak to people who were at the party when the attack happened at
around 5.30am. In another incident, a man is in hospital following
a shooting in Kensal Green in the early hours of Sunday
morning.

Gun crime in South London, Leader, 16 February
Today the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Ian Blair, will meet
with senior detectives to discuss the most recent shooting of a
young, mixed-race teenager in Clapham last night. It is the third
such shooting in south London in a fortnight, and a matter for
Operation Trident, which deals with gun crime in the black
community. Plainly, the immediate solution to the problem is for
proactive policing to tackle the gangs, most of them involved with
drug-dealing - and for a large, visible police presence in the
worst areas to reassure everyone else. Sir Ian Blair must also deal
with the most worrying aspect of the problem: as we report today,
gangs are, increasingly, grooming boys and girls to act as their
gun runners - because the five-year mandatory sentences for adults
who carry guns is not applicable to anyone under 21. Operation
Trident has charged 16 teenagers in the last couple of years with
murder. The loophole in the law which treats young people with guns
more leniently than adults is an unacceptable anomaly.
But, of course, policing is only part of the solution. The social
malaise that drives young black boys to take refuge from a violent
street culture in gang membership is far more intractable. It would
be easy if this were a problem susceptible to more public funding.
But the truth is that there has been colossal investment in the
problem areas of south London, despite which gang culture is, if
anything, spreading. Of course, those community groups deserve
funding which try to intervene early to prevent children falling
into the hands of gangs, or to wean young black men away from drugs
and violence. Black church groups can provide alternative values
for young black men than those of the streets.
There is only so much that the state can do to address a primary
cause of the problem - the fact that many susceptible black boys
are raised by mothers and grandmothers because their fathers are
absent, though we can at least abandon the pretence that there is
nothing to choose between one family unit and another. But what the
state can do it focus far more singlemindedly on education -
because it is good, rigorously demanding, tightly disciplined
schools that can offer black youths a brighter future than drug
dealing and violence. If that means boys-only schools, because they
work better, fine. If it means paying a premium for good black male
teachers because there are so few of them, that has to be
considered. If it means academic selection, to prevent bright,
vulnerable boys becoming bored at school, that should be on the
cards too. The phenomenon of a generation of alienated, disaffected
black boys is too troubling to exclude any options.

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This is Josh Neicho emailing from Letters at the London Evening
Standard. Having come across your website, I was keen to get in
touch with regards to the gun killings over the past fortnight in
London and the Prime Minister's reaction. I would be very
interested to hear your comments about the lack of effectiveness of
the Government's legislation on firearms over the past decade on
the illegal gun trade, and its impact on the legal trade, and the
best policy that could be pursued now against gun violence. I copy
today's news stories and Friday's leader on the subject below.

Kind regards,

Josh Neicho
Evening Standard Letters
020 7938 7596

I trust you have read and thoroughly digested my own writings on
my website, including my letters to my MP written a decade ago.
Most especially that you have closely studied my "readme" file,
http://dvc.org.uk/dunblane/readme.html
…including the footnoted references, and my "Gun Law for the 21st
Century" proposals,
http://dvc.org.uk/dunblane/gunlaw.html.

The legal gun trade is easy to dismiss: since the McKay Report
of 1972 (and most likely going as far back as the Blackwell Report
of 1918) the policy of the government has quite evidently been to
minimise the numbers of firearms in the hands of
law-abiding citizens as best they can. The various gun
atrocities and shootings that grabbed public attention have been
used as an excuse to carry this policy forward. There are numerous
criminological studies that demonstrate that in very best
case disarming the law-abiding does not have any effect on the
use of firearms by criminals. There is excellent evidence that
disarming the law-abiding and denying them the right to self
defence positively causes violent crime to proliferate. In
this modern, globalised world the market will provide. If the
demand is there it will be supplied. The sorry history of the
prohibition of (some) drugs demonstrates that you're on a hiding to
nothing if you think making guns illegal is going to retrieve the
situation.

This latest wave of violence and crime
has been triggered by the battle to gain control of this [drug]
trade.

See also the history of the Glasgow drugs trade, where just such
a turf battle resulting from a power vacuum caused Glasgow's
homicide rate in 2005 to exceed that of New York, according to the
TV documentary "MacIntyre's Underworld". Of course it being Glasgow
there was a preponderance of axe and machete murders rather than
death by firearm.

But what the state can do it focus far
more singlemindedly on education - because it is good, rigorously
demanding, tightly disciplined schools that can offer black youths
a brighter future than drug dealing and violence. If that means
boys-only schools, because they work better, fine. If it means
paying a premium for good black male teachers because there are so
few of them, that has to be considered. If it means academic
selection, to prevent bright, vulnerable boys becoming bored at
school, that should be on the cards too. The phenomenon of a
generation of alienated, disaffected black boys is too troubling to
exclude any options.

This is one of the most sensible things I've seen written about
the issue. However, it is only a start. And everybody is fooling
themselves if they think the problems will remain confined to the
black community if current Government policies continue. Your
reference to male teachers is particularly pertinent: there is
serious under-representation of male teachers in the current school
system.

The problem is deep and multi-dimensional and the solutions will
have to be bold and farsighted to counter the on-going rise in
violence against the person. Yes, young boys and teenagers need
discipline and, perhaps more importantly, a sense of personal
responsibility. Firearms ownership and use is the very thing to
teach personal responsibility and requires discipline in a manner
more apparent than few other life skills. (Though arguably driving
instruction for young men needs much closer scrutiny given the what
happens on the roads.) But firearms (and weapons in general) use
and ownership must be thoroughly integrated into the structure
of the civil society. This is why I'm beginning to believe the
situation has deteriorated to the extent that we may have to
emulate the Swiss model and make gun ownership compulsory.
This will force the government and society to make the necessary
adjustments to ensure that peoples' conduct is more continent and
circumspect. This won't come from more laws, it will come
from individuals and communities accepting responsibility for
violence in the community and their personal responsibility for it
- to not engage in it and to actively resist it. America
provides instructive example here: in the parts of America where
gun bans have been tried violent crime is the worst, whereas in the
states and counties where legal gun ownership rates are high
violent crime is significantly lower.

Britain is quite probably the most heavily-policed country in
the world. It has the highest incarceration rate in the EU. It has
the most restrictive laws on firearms ownership and use in the
western world. More of the same is not going to solve this problem.
It's time for fresh thinking based on the rational analysis of the
problems and workable solutions and not on political and legal
dogma.

I've been a voice crying in the wilderness for the past ten
years and I don't expect that will change any time soon. I do know
that people will pay the price for not listening and
understanding.

Of particular relevance to the weapons effect hypothesis is some
of the data from the Rochester Youth Development Study.[43] This
ongoing study tracked approximately 1,000 7th and 8th grade
adolescents for a period of 4-1/2 years - until they reached 11th
and 12th grade, respectively.[44]

The subjects were students from the Rochester, New York, public
school system who, at the commencement of the study, were in
attendance during the 1987-88 academic year. The researchers noted
that the sample population represented the entire range of 7th and
8th grade students. They intentionally, however, selected more
students from high-crime areas, and fewer from low-crime areas,
because their goals were to identify factors that led to
delinquency and drug use, and to develop policy initiatives for
reducing such activity.

One aspect of the study's analysis was to determine how the
pattern of firearm acquisition and possession by juveniles affected
their behavior. For this part, the subjects were limited to
males,[45] and three groups of adolescents were identified: those
who owned legal guns initially comprised 3% of the sample
(approximately 20 boys); those who owned illegal guns comprised 7%
of the sample (approximately 47 boys). The remainder, about 605
boys, reported that they did not own a gun. This information on gun
ownership was obtained at the time the youngsters were in 9th and
10th grades when most were 14 and 15 years of age.[46]

It is of special interest that the least violent of these three
juvenile groups were young gun-owners who had been "socialized"
into gun ownership through a family member - usually the father. As
the researchers noted: "Parents who own legal guns socialize their
children into the legitimate gun culture. Those parents who do not
own guns are unlikely to socialize their children in that
manner."

Among the study's specific findings were that children who
acquired guns in a lawful manner (from relatives) never committed
firearm-related crimes (0%), whereas children who acquired guns
illegally often did so (24%; compare this to 1% in the
non-gun-owning sample who did so). Children who acquired guns in a
lawful manner were less likely to commit any kind of street crime
(14%) than children who did not own guns (24%), or than children
who acquired a gun illegally (74%).

The presence of firearms in their lives apparently reduced
socially undesirable aggressive behavior among the group of legal
gun-owning children. This phenomenon should be explored more fully
in order to determine how placing a lethal weapon in the hands of
an adolescent can restrain aggressive impulses.

Although the Rochester study was not intended to be an
investigation of the weapons effect hypothesis, the study provides
another means of assessing validity of the hypothesis. If there is
a weapons effect, adolescents should have exhibited it, since the
emotional stability of this age group tends to be more turbulent
than in adulthood.[47] As any parent of an adolescent knows,
heated, passionate arguments and other lesser conflicts are
inevitable during this period. While firearm-related crime
committed by some of the gun-owning boys did take place, delinquent
behavior facilitated with the use of a gun is premeditated, not an
"act of passion." Premeditated violent crime does not fall under
the purview of the impulsive behavior predicted by the weapons
effect.

Every one of the study's youngsters had a gun within easy reach
or knew where to find one quickly.[48] Lizotte and Krohn[49] noted
that "those desiring a handgun have no trouble obtaining them from
an underground economy." Yet not one of the subjects grabbed for a
gun in the heat of the moment and shot his mother, his father, his
sister, or his brother. Doors may have slammed shut with explosive
force, expletives may have been lobbed around - but bullets didn't
whiz by. How can this finding be reconciled with the predictions of
the weapons effect hypothesis?

III. Implications of the Rochester Study

The lesson to be learned, however, is more than just the lack of
weapons effect validity: the Rochester study shows how attempts to
extinguish America's traditional gun culture may result in
unintended societal problems. The differences in behavior between
the group of young gun-owners who have been socialized into the gun
culture through the family, and those who have not, are significant
and their ramifications profound.

For example, let us review the issue of firearm safety. That
gunowners in the U.S. are overwhelmingly safety conscious can be
inferred from the ever-downward spiral of firearm-related
accidental deaths which continues to this day.[50] It is reasonable
to assume that when an adult presents a gun to a child, the safety
of the child - and those around him - become of paramount concern
to that adult. The adults have a high stake in teaching the child
to safely and responsibly handle that gun, respect for what the gun
can do, and a detailed knowledge of how the gun works.

Contrast the teenager who is taught about guns by an adult
family member with the youngster who acquires a gun illegally -
from the black market, or from a friend (who may have acquired the
gun illegally, too). All knowledge about the use and workings of
that firearm is learned in a clandestine manner necessitated by the
legal consequences of discovery of possession of that firearm.

Because of today's almost unintelligible, often contradictory
and complex maze of firearm laws - especially those that pertain to
possession and use in an urban setting - adults are increasingly
unable to take children to the local range for target practice, or
to seek out the help of professionals for safety and marksmanship
training. Under such circumstances, knowledge of how a gun works,
and what it is capable of, is determined by what is learned on the
street and what is seen in the movies and other media - not
necessarily accurate sources for the responsible handling of
firearms.

In America, firearm ownership continues, for the most part, to
be kept in the family, handed down from one generation to the next.
But near-prohibitory firearm controls will ensure that the primary
modality for youngsters to learn about guns changes. Summarizing
the Rochester evidence, Lizotte and Tesoriero concluded: "Boys who
own legal guns are socialized by their parents and pose no threat
to society….general policies should not be targeted at youth (and
their fathers) who own guns for legitimate purposes." (emphasis in
original). Removing adults from the cycle of firearm ownership may
threaten the present declining trend of firearm-related accidents
and may also perversely change the nature of America's traditional
peaceable sporting gun culture.

Weapons effect fear is being used to incrementally destroy the
most socially beneficial means of introducing children to a
wholesome gun culture. During the last decade, the number of
schools that have rifle teams dramatically declined.[51] Only in
certain locations, it appears, are gun-owning parents willing to
make a determined commitment and resist social pressures within the
school system.[52]

[44]. Eighty-four percent of the original study sample was
tracked to about 22 years of age, demonstrating a high retention
rate. Alan J. Lizotte and Marvin D. Krohn, "Sources of Gun
Acquisition among Young Urban Males," delivered at the November
1999 meeting of the American Society of Criminology.

[45]. The researchers noted that girls rarely own guns and they
therefore excluded them from this part of the study's analysis.

[46]. By the time the study group reached 11th and 12th grade,
the number of boys who owned legal guns had risen to about 40, and
the number of boys who owned illegal guns had risen to about 60. By
this time, therefore, there were approximately 100 gun-owning boys
in the study population out of about 660 boys, from a total
retained sample of about 900 (males and females, combined). It
would be worthwhile to repeat such a study on a larger sample size,
especially in an area where restrictions on juvenile possession of
firearms are less severe than in New York.

[47]. According to Westen:
Psychologists have offered two conflicting views of adolescent
social and personality development. One approach emphasizes that as
adolescents grow less dependent upon their parents and try out new
values and roles, they often become rebellious and moody, shifting
from compliance one moment to defiance the next. According to this
conflict model, put forth at the turn of the century, and later
elaborated by psychodynamic theorists, conflict and crisis are
normal in adolescence. Conflict theorists argue that adolescents
need to go through a period of crisis to separate themselves
psychologically from their parents and carve out their own
identity. Beeper studies (which page or `beep' participants at
random intervals over the course of a day to measure what they are
thinking or feeling at the moment; Chapter 9) show that adolescents
do, in fact, experience a wider range of moods over a shorter
period of time than adults. Longitudinal studies find decreases in
hostility and negative emotionality and increases in diligence,
self-control, and congeniality as teenagers move into early
adulthood. Other theorists argue, however, that the stormy, moody,
conflict-ridden adolescent is the exception rather than the rule.
According to the continuity model, adolescence is not a turbulent
period but is essentially continuous with childhood and adulthood
(all emphases in original).
Drew Westen, Psychology: Brain, Behavior, and Culture, (N.Y.: John
Wile & Sons, Inc., 2002), 509-10.
Santrock noted that "Early adolescence is a time when conflict with
parents escalates beyond childhood levels," John W. Santrock,
Life-Span Development, 6th ed. (Madison, WI: Brown & Benchmark
Publishers, 1997), 387-88.
Wright and Rossi noted that, "In the best of circumstances,
adolescence can be a much-troubled period in a young man's life. .
. ," James D. Wright and Peter Rossi, Armed and Considered
Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and their Firearms (N.Y.: Aldine de
Gruyter, 1986), 122.

[48]. Sheley and Wright interviewed male students in 10
inner-city public schools. In asking them how they would go about
obtaining a gun if they wanted one, "Most felt there were numerous
ways but that family, friends, and street sources were the main
sources;" 53 percent of the students would " `borrow' a gun from a
family member or friend," and 37 percent of the students would "get
one off street." Joseph F. Sheley and James D. Wright, "Gun
Acquisition and Possession in Selected Juvenile Samples," Research
in Brief, National Institute of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention (December 1993).

[49]. Alan J. Lizotte and Marvin D. Krohn, "Sources of Gun
Acquisition among Young Urban Males," delivered at the November
1999 meeting of the American Society of Criminology.

[50]. See "Gun Accidents Down," news release from the National
Shooting Sports Foundation (Newtown, CT), 6 Feb. 2000. "The
National Safety Council's most recent report on accident injuries
indicates that in 1998 firearms-related fatalities reached an
all-time low of 900 - the fewest accidents since record keeping
began in 1903."

[51]. Lott noted that "nowhere were guns more common than at
schools. Until 1969, virtually every public high school in New York
City had a shooting club. High-school students carried their guns
to school on the subways in the morning, turned them over to their
homeroom teacher or the gym coach and retrieved them after school
for target practice. The federal government even gave students
rifles and paid for their ammunition. Students regularly competed
in city-wide shooting contests, with the winners being awarded
university scholarships." John R. Lott, "More Gun Controls? They
Haven't Worked in the Past," Wall Street Journal, 17 June 1999.
Acceleration of this decline was likely facilitated by passage of
the 1990 federal legislation banning guns within 1,000 feet of a
school, signed into law by then-President George Bush. Although
ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on April 25, 1995, the
legislation was reworked, resurrected by Congress, and then signed
back into law by President Clinton that same year. The legislation
had the practical effect of posting signs on school property
containing the message, "Only criminals are allowed to carry guns
here; all others are potential victims." As Lott and Landes noted:
"While the recent rash of public school shootings during the
1997-98 school year took place after the period of our study, these
incidents raise questions about the unintentional consequences of
laws. The five public school shootings took place after a 1995
federal law banned guns (including permitted concealed handguns)
within a thousand feet of a school. The possibility exists that
attempts to outlaw guns from schools, no matter how well meaning,
may have produced perverse effects. It is interesting to note that
during the 1977 to 1995 period, 15 shootings took place in schools
in states without right-to-carry laws and only one took place in a
state with this type of law. There were 19 deaths and 97 injuries
in states without the law, while there was one death and two
injuries in states with the law." John R. Lott, Jr. and William M.
Landes, Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and
Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and
Public Law Enforcement, University of Chicago Law School, John M.
Olin Law & Economics Working Paper No. 73 (2nd Series, Apr
1999), 5.

[52]. See Linda F. Burghardt, "Chess, Sure. But Rifles? In Great
Neck? Great Neck Skirmish: Scholastic Rifle Team," New York Times,
28 November 1999. Great Neck, New York, is an upscale
politically-liberal suburban community just outside New York City
on Long Island. It was solely through the efforts of Howard Last (a
civil engineer and a certified firearms instructor) and his
14-year-old daughter Lisa that the Great Neck South High School
rifle team came into being. However, Last and his daughter faced
stiff opposition from people like Susan Posen who headed a campaign
to eliminate riflery in the Great Neck schools. According to Posen,
"A rifle is an instrument for killing. Shooting is not a sport.
When I read that my community was supporting a rifle team, I was
incensed. In light of the horrifying gun violence in so many
schools, how can we possibly justify helping our children become
adept at using guns. . . .It is my goal to totally ban riflery
participation in this town." Last disagreed: "The kids who shoot
are nearly always honor students. It's a very, very safe sport.
Every year 50,000 people are killed in car accidents, yet we have
driver education in the school. Why not firearms training and a
varsity riflery team." In a private E-Mail communication (27 May
2002), Last stated, "Besides Lisa, my other reason for forming the
team was for the kids. The kids are the future. Almost all the kids
were honor students and/or AP scholars." In the end, however, Posen
got her wish and the team was disbanded.